Web Analytics Generally
Web analytics tools and techniques can collect information about website visitors so that the website owner may better understand and serve those visitors. Website usage via browsers is regularly tracked and analyzed by commercially available web analytics services, which gather detailed data about web page usage, and to some extent about particular website users. Entities which provide other entities with web analytics services are referred to as “analytics providers”. One leading web analytics provider is Omniture, Inc., of Orem, Utah, the owner of the present invention. Omniture provides web analytics technology under its well-known mark SiteCatalyst™. All other marks used herein are property of their respective owners.
Web analytics data can be collected from server logs or by using web-beacons. Web-beacons are small image requests placed in a web page to cause communication between the user's device and a server. The server may be controlled by the analytics provider, by the vendor whose website contains the web-beacons, or by another party. Web-beacons are also known as clear GIFs, web bugs, image requests, or pixel tags. Web-beacons can be used for advertising, behavioral targeting, and other processes, to gather information about visits to websites. Web-beacons are commonly used by analytics providers to gather analytics data on behalf of their customers.
Some cell phones and other wireless devices can be configured with a web browser, RSS feed aggregator, and/or other tools for accessing web and/or other internet content without requiring the use of a browser running on an end-user's personal computer. Examples include cell phones, other mobile phones, wireless devices such as those sold under the Blackberry mark, personal digital assistants such as those sold under the Palm mark, and/or other devices, including handheld devices and others. Such wireless web devices communicate with a wireless gateway using one or more wireless communication protocols such as WAP, J2ME, I-mode, LEAP, EZWeb, and J-SkyWeb. The wireless gateway communicates in turn with the web using one or more internet protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, XML, and RSS, among others.
Some typical web-beacon-based web analytics products can track visitor information about a served web page by executing JavaScript code on that page that constructs a web-beacon request (usually a transparent 1×1 GIF with name-value pairs) which is sent to the designated web analytics servers. The analytics servers then collect the information from the web-beacon request, serve the GIF to the browser client and process that data for consumption by the analytics provider's customer. This data collection activity is performed by the analytics provider at the customer's request; the customer in at least some best practice approaches discloses this data collection activity to the visitor in their privacy policy. Browser clients on wireless devices may involve additional steps in the process. In one scenario, for instance, a wireless device sends a WAP request to a WAP gateway/proxy, which sends an HTTP request to an origin server. The origin server sends an HTTP response to the WAP gateway/proxy, which then sends a WAP response to the wireless device.
Qualification of Website Data Generally
Google, Yahoo, and other entities provide or facilitate pay-per-click (“PPC”) advertising in their search engines. They help advertisers display ads on a network, which a consumer can click on to learn more about an offer or about a vendor. If such ads are displayed in response to keywords or other indicia that indicate the consumer's present interests, then the ads can be more relevant. This provides an important service, since it helps decrease time spent by consumers dealing with ads for products or services they are not interested in, and it helps decrease money spent on ads that do not help generate revenue for the vendor whose product or service is advertised.
However, fraudulent clickthroughs undermine the advantages and effectiveness of PPC advertising. Some fraudulent clickthroughs take the form of clicking repeatedly on a competitor's ad after the ad is presented by Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or another search engine advertising service provider, in order to make the competitor incur advertising costs without receiving a true website visitor and/or corresponding sales. Some fraudulent clickthroughs take the form of clicking repeatedly on one's own ad (or one's intended beneficiary's ad), to make the interest in the advertised product or service appear greater than would be the case if a fair and scientific sampling were taken of the consumer population in question. Some fraudulent clickthroughs are performed directly by humans, while other fraudulent clickthroughs are performed automatically by programs such as bots, clickbots, or hitbots. “Bot” is a technical term, derived from “robot”, which is applied to programs or other software that automates (partially or fully) one or more tasks that are sometimes performed more directly by people. Fraudulent clickthroughs and other invalid clicks are also known as “phantom” clicks.
Other concepts related to the present invention may be known, or become apparent through sources other than this background, including without limitation the references being made of record in connection with the present patent application.